Crying Shoulder
by ally.enchantress
Summary: A post-ep for Shattered. "Her hands still had traces of blood on them, invisible stains that joined the ones already present."


**Post-ep for "Shattered". I've been working on it for a while, meaning to post it but then forgetting to finish... So here it is, finally. It's a long one-shot, but that's what it is. Single chapter, and I think it wraps itself up fairly nicely. I can only hope you guys like it as much as I do.**

**WARNINGS: None, really. If you watched "Shattered", you'll know all the scenes mentioned. If you haven't watched "Shattered", SPOILER ALERT!**

**DISCLAIMER: Dick Wolf has decided to create another Law & Order. NBC has decided that this new Law & Order has proved itself worthy of taking the 10/9c spot on Wednesday. Since Mr. Wolf has yet to protest this unjust development, I think the rights to SVU should go to either Mariska Hargitay, who may or may not raise hell for this time slot theft, or the adoring fans who CERTAINLY know what's best for the show. Until I finish drafting my letter, SVU is Dick Wolf's.**

_And I dropped out, I burned up, I fought my way back from the dead. Tuned in, turned on, remembered the thing that you said. I'll be your crying shoulder. I'll be love's suicide. And I'll be better when I'm older, and I'll be the greatest fan of your life._

_~ Edwin McCain. "I'll Be"_

Olivia slid her key into the lock and turned. Even hours later, she was still crying from the events of the day.

As she stepped inside her apartment, she felt her eyes begin burning as further liquid built up behind them, begging for release. She didn't want to cry, but unfortunately, she already was.

Swiping at the tears, she made her way into her bedroom. She slipped out of her pants, bloodstained and damp, and she unbuttoned the shirt she wore. The blue had been ruined when she stupidly wiped her hands after Melinda was taken from her by the paramedics, but she supposed that was okay. She knew she would never, ever again feel clean putting it on. Even if it was Elliot's.

She'd gone running with him one day, when they'd gotten off work early, but then they'd been called back in. It was too urgent to pick up their work clothes from Olivia's apartment, and Elliot had forgotten all about it, having a spare change of clothes in his locker. She'd found it that night, intending to give it back to him, but something had made her keep it. Maybe it was pure sentimentality, but she still liked the color, and she liked wearing it. She wasn't sure he'd ever noticed, but it made her feel closer to him. Goodness knew that was a hard place to get to in recent years.

Olivia pulled on a gray NYPD hoodie and a pair of pajama pants that Lizzie had made for her a few years ago. They were navy flannel with little snowflakes on them. Not exactly season-appropriate, but they matched her mood.

Her head was so heavy. Every muscle in her body wanted to collapse onto the bed, but she made herself go over to her closet first. She rummaged around the back shelves until she found what she was looking for. Picking up her prize and pressing it to her chest, she returned to her bed and burrowed under the covers. Her eyelids slammed closed, hoping to escape the world that was all too real and all too horrible.

Immediately, sensations assaulted her mind, playing on a film strip before her, and she tore her eyes open again. She saw Melinda bleeding on the ground. She felt the blood pooling beneath her hands. She remembered years before, when she had pushed down hard on Alex's gunshot wound as well. She feared that, like last time, she wouldn't be able to do anything. More than that, she recalled with nauseating vividness how it felt to slide the scalpel through Melinda's skin. No matter how many throats she saw slit, no matter how many times her fingers touched the scar on her own neck, she could not come to grips with just how soft human flesh was. How yielding. How weak.

She remembered drawing blood, hearing Melinda cry out in pain, sliding the tube into her lung and watching all the blood drain out, onto the morgue floor. She'd told Melinda she wasn't sure she could do it. But she had. She had helped to save one of the few friends she'd managed to keep over the years. She had just left said friend in the hospital, closely guarded by her husband and daughter. She wondered, then, why she still felt so awful.

Her hands still had traces of blood on them. She'd done her best to wash them in the hospital, but she knew there were still some left, invisible stains that joined the ones already present. She had blood on her hands, in every sense of the word, and no amount of bleach or cleanser would remove them.

Once again, Olivia began to cry. She cried for Melinda, she cried for Jo Marlowe, she cried for Nicholas, she even cried for Sophie. Tears streamed down her face, and her breathing came in ragged gasps as her grief outstripped her need for oxygen. At some point, she ceased to cry for just the events of recent days, and instead she sobbed long and hard for everything and anything, the unspeakable horrors she'd never had the chance to feel sadness for.

Never had she cried in such a way, for no specific reason and to accomplish no end. Any amount of moisture that gathered in her eyes was always designed to relieve an acute pain and then depart. She was not meant to indulge herself in pure grief. There was no room in her day for sorrow, only for momentary upset. Grief was not welcome in her diet of depravity.

It was common for most humans though, wasn't it? Normal people were allowed to despair over the pain they'd experienced over the many years of their lives. Olivia decided that, her conception and birth and job aside, she breathed the same air as normal people. She needed food and water to live, she needed a home to feel safe and comfortable, and she needed love to feel worth something. Olivia decided that if she was normal enough to be considered human in the first place, she could satiate, just this once, her need to be sad.

She wasn't sure how long it took, but her sobs eventually gave way to silent tears. Not bothering to wipe the drops from her eyes, she got up from her bed to silence the person outside her apartment building.

"Who is it?" she spoke into the intercom.

"Liv?" It was Elliot. He was outside, and he had been respectful enough of her space to wait for permission to enter it.

"Yeah, I'm here."

"Can I come up?"

Part of her wanted to send him away. Part of her wanted to tell him she didn't want visitors and to come back in the morning. That part of her, the part that dominated her very existence, uncurled from its ball of humiliation and reasserted its authority over her. It reminded her that she was a strong, independent woman. It reminded her that she didn't cry, and she certainly didn't cry where her partner could see her. It reminded her of who she had been since she was old enough to dress herself for school.

It also reminded her that she had slowly started losing that person tonight. And the fading of that person had awakened the birth of another, more realistic, and quite frankly a more self-loving person. This new person told her that, before she was a strong and independent woman, she was a human being, and human beings needed moments in time when they could feel comforted.

She did not particularly want the sort of comfort that would involve breaking down and pouring her heart out to her partner, who had possibly just stopped by to say goodnight, but talking to Elliot was by far the most soothing thing she did during the day, provided they weren't hollering at each other. If she was adapting this new policy of taking care of herself, she could start by showing the most important person in her life that she did, in fact, need him.

While she waited for him to come up, she looked down at the thing clutched in her hand, the thing she didn't even remember taking from her bed. A grey-brown, stuffed rabbit stared up at her from big brown eyes. Yellow, orange, and white-checkered ribbon formed a bow around the toy's neck, and a little pink rose rested atop her head. She debated over putting her back in her little box in the closet, but then Elliot was knocking on the door, and Olivia really had no choice but to place the rabbit gently on her couch and open her door.

Any prayers she'd had that the lighting would hide her red eyes went unanswered. Concern immediately flooded Elliot's features, and he stepped inside hesitantly, as though worried she would disappear like a mirage before his eyes.

He almost asked her to open the door again, just to make sure he wasn't dreaming.

In only the rumpled sweatshirt and pair of pajama pants, he would have thought her adorable. But he saw the redness in her eyes and the tracks on her cheeks. He saw the tearstains on her hoodie. Seeing her like this would have been devastating in and of itself, but it was worse for one simple reason. And that was the fact that he was seeing her like this at all.

He'd never, ever seen her cry. He'd seen her blink tears from her eyes before, but he'd never actually seen her cry. He knew she did, and he also knew she hid that part of her life from him. She had never opened herself like this, taken him so far behind the mask before.

His heart seemed to shatter as he realized just how much pain she had to be in for this to happen.

And he knew that addressing it was the worst possible thing he could do.

"How you doing?" he asked, wincing when she lowered her gaze. Her face seemed to shutter, to close up on him.

That was why he wasn't surprised when she said, "I'm fine." It was her age-old response, the one that told him to get out of her personal business because it was none of his concern. What did surprise him was when she sat down on her couch and cuddled a stuffed animal of some sort to her chest. "Okay, never mind," she said finally, "I'm only… semi-fine."

Elliot decided he should start cleaning out his ears. Was she really… talking to him? In a very convoluted way, but still.

Taking his cues from her, he sat on the other side of the couch. "It sort of reminded me of Alex, ya know?" he commented uncomfortably.

"Yeah…" Olivia seemed shocked that he was encouraging this blatant violation of their well-established boundaries, and joining her in the forbidden territory.

"Were you sleeping?"

"Y-yeah."

He raised his eyebrows.

"Sort of," she amended quickly. He was still unconvinced, so she sighed and answered truthfully. "No, I wasn't sleeping." And then, deciding she owed him more than that, she continued, "I just keep… seeing her… seeing her fall, you know?" She looked up at him. "And hitting the ground… That sound she made…"

"You did everything right, Liv," Elliot whispered, reaching over to put a hand on her shoulder.

She shook it off irritably. "Don't patronize me, Elliot, and don't insult my intelligence by telling me I did everything right when I didn't." She got up from the couch, absently taking the bunny with her and folding her arms around it.

"Then don't insult my own intelligence by lying to me and expecting me to believe you." His answer was snappy, filled with the self-satisfied tone he used when he knew he was right. "You're not _fine _at all, and Melinda being shot is not what you can't get out of your head."

Olivia turned around, completely ignorant of the bunny in her arms. "Then do tell," she said as sarcasm dripped from her every inflection. "Since you claim to know me so well—"

"Oh, I don't _claim_ to know you so well, Olivia, I _do."_ He was up now, and in her face so close she could feel the heat from his breath. "The thing you can't forget is that Melinda could have died in that room. She could have died."

She backed away from him, shaking her head. She wasn't sure if she was fleeing him or the horrible words he was speaking. "Stop it," she breathed. She cursed herself as her eyes welled with tears.

Elliot wasn't letting up. He followed her back until she was pressed against the wall, and his hands were on either side of her, preventing her escape. "You can't forget that she might have died despite your help. You can't forget about the blood, Olivia." Tears were streaming silently down her cheeks now, and the bunny was clutched in her hands. He didn't stop. "You can't forget how it was everywhere. You were scared you'd hurt her when you were draining the blood from her lungs. You were scared you were going to kill her trying to save her." He was intense, burning, anger, trying to make her see how he knew these things. He just needed her to understand. "You were scared you were going to watch another friend die while you had your hands on their wounds trying to save them."

Olivia whimpered then, a soft, almost unintelligible sound. Her eyes had fluttered closed, and she watched the nightmare play out again.

Arms pulled her off the wall and closed around her, enfolding her in the sanctity of Elliot's embrace for the second time in her life. Comfort surrounded her in a soft blanket, and she felt the feathery lightness lift arms until she held him, too. Her shoulders shook with sobs, and she knew through the spasms that he carried her back to the couch. He laid her legs, bent at the knee, over his lap. He pulled her closer to him, putting a hand on the back of her head and easing it onto his shoulder. Liquid dripped from his eyes as well, and he rested his own head on hers. His tears fell into her hair.

They stayed that way until Olivia's breathing evened out.

"What's with the teddy bear?" Elliot asked softly. It seemed like an appropriate question for some reason.

She chuckled just as quietly, sharing his belief. "It's a bunny," she whispered. "My mother gave it to me. Every year, she gave me a stuffed animal… To hold onto and cuddle and cry into when… she couldn't offer her own shoulder. She told me she always wanted me to have a birthday present, even if she wasn't around to enjoy it because she was… drunk or out. The… the year she died, she gave me the bunny. I guess…" she shook her head, and her nose brushed Elliot's neck. "I guess I wanted a shoulder to cry on," she finished, with barely a breath of air to give it voice.

Elliot moved his head back to look at her, at the same time she tilted her head up. Whether it was pure accident or divine intervention, his lips found her forehead. A shudder ran through her, but she stayed perfectly still, like there was a butterfly on her skin, and moving would scare the delicate thing away.

Olivia pulled back after a moment, her eyes still sparkling with tears. She searched his eyes and then smiled slowly. He matched her smile and found her hand. Their fingers twined. "Want mine?" he asked.

She nodded. She returned her head to his shoulder, and she drifted off to sleep. The bunny lay on the floor, its brown eyes twinkling in the dim lights.

**Reviews are lovely, friends! Encouragement, constructive criticism, things you liked or disliked... I love it all! It helps me write better. Please grace me with one from you!**


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